Fox Searchlight Acquires Amma Asante’s ‘A United Kingdom’

Fox Searchlight has officially picked up North American rights to Amma Asante’s historical drama, A United Kingdom. The film premiered at Toronto earlier this year, and will receive it’s European premiere by opening the 60th BFI London Film Festival on October 5th.

A United Kingdom, directed by Amma Asante (Belle), stars David Oyelowo (Selma) and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl), and revolves around the true story of Seretse Khama, King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1947 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments. This is the story of how the British Government conspired with apartheid South Africa to prevent the mixed race royal couple from returning home.

The script was written by Guy Hibbert and was based on the book Colour Bar by Susan Williams. Rick McCallum (Star Wars), Oyelowo, Justin Moore-Lewy, Brunson Green (The Help) serve as executive producers of the film alongside BBC Films’ Christine Langan, the BFI’s Ben Roberts, Ingenious Media’s Eleanor Clark Windo.

In 2005, Asante, was the recipient of a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television) Award for Outstanding Debut for her first feature, A Way of Life. After her feature debut, Asante started to develop Where Hands Touchoriginally supposed to go into production fall of 2009; however, the project fell through. Ten years later, Asante went on to direct her second feature Belle, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw in 2014 which grossed over $16M.

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